THE NELSON A.

ROCKEFELLER VISION
ARTS OF AFRICA, OCEANIA, AND THE AMERICAS

Alisa LaGamma, Joanne Pillsbury, Eric Kjellgren, and Yaëlle Biro

The Metropolitan Museum 0f Art, New York

This publication is issued in conjunction with the exhibition “The Nelson A.
Rockefeller Vision: In Pursuit of the Best in the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and
the Americas,” on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
from October 8, 2013, to October 5, 2014.
The exhibition is made possible by the Friends of the Department of the
Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
This publication is made possible by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation.
The Metropolitan’s quarterly Bulletin program is supported in part by
the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund for The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
established by the cofounder of Reader’s Digest.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Summer 2014
Volume LXXII, number 1
Copyright © 2014 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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Publisher and Editor in Chief: Mark Polizzotti
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Designer: Makiko Katoh
Front cover: Queen Mother pendant mask (Iyoba), Edo peoples, Court of
Benin, Nigeria, 16th century (fig. 7)
Inside front and back covers: detail of Paintings from a ceremonial-house
ceiling, artists of Mariwai village, Kwoma people, Washkuk Hills, Upper
Sepik River, Papua New Guinea, 1970 and 1973 (fig. 45)
Typeset in Arno Pro and Neutraface
The Metropolitan Museum of Art endeavors to respect copyright in a man-
ner consistent with its nonprofit educational mission. If you believe any
material has been included in this publication improperly, please contact
the Editorial Department. Photographs of works in the Museum’s collec-
tion are by Eileen Travell, Karin L. Willis, and Peter Zeray, The Photograph
Studio, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Additional photograph credits: Museum of Primitive Art Records, Visual
Resource Archive, Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the
Americas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: figs. 1
(AR.1999.16.19), 3 (AR.1999.17.98), 4 (AR.1999.14.28; photograph by Charles
Uht), 5 (AR.1999.31.1), 10 (AR.1999.14.29), 12 (AR.1999.17.47.3, Uht 25-17;
photograph by Charles Uht), 14 (AR.1999.19.31), 25 (AR.1999.17.1.9; photo-
graph by Charles Uht), 35 (PSC 2004.20.46; photograph by Michael C.
Rockefeller, courtesy Mary Rockefeller Morgan), 40 (AR.1999.33), 57
(AR.1999.14.29); © Waintrob, Budd Studio, courtesy The Waintrob Project
for the Visual Arts: fig. 2; Eliot Elisofon © President and Fellows of Harvard
College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology: fig. 11 (PM
2006.37.1.15.30, digital file no. 155700079); Michael Fredericks: figs. 13, 32;
Rockefeller Family Archives, Courtesy Rockefeller Archive Center: figs. 20,
22, 27, 36, 47, 48; Charles Uht: fig. 24; courtesy the Peabody Museum of
Archeology and Ethnology, Harvard University (2006.12.1.104.24): fig. 38;
from Proceedings of the International Congress of African Culture, n.d.: fig. 49;
from Gallery 15 (March 1998), Harare, p. 20: fig. 53; Musée du Quai Branly,
Paris: fig. 55; © Courtesy École du Louvre, Paris. All rights reserved: fig. 56.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or trans-
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metmuseum.org
AUTHORS’ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the
Americas expresses its thanks to Mary Rockefeller Morgan
and her family, who have contributed to the establishment of
what has become the premier public fine-arts collection of
the classical traditions that developed historically across
Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The seed that they planted
in a venerable cultural institution has transformed the appre-
ciation of these artistic traditions globally. We are also
indebted to the many generous supporters of The Michael C.
Rockefeller Wing and of the Museum at large who have
allowed the collection to continue to expand and flourish in
exciting new directions. For their help in identifying relevant
archival documents and photographs, the authors acknowl-
edge the following: Jennifer L. Larson, Assistant Visual
Resource Manager, AAOA Visual Resource Archive, and
Amy Fitch, Michele Hiltzik, and Mary Ann Quinn,
Rockefeller Family Archives, Rockefeller Center, New York.
Joanne Pillsbury would also like to thank Anna Efanova,
Edward S. Harwood, Anna Indych-López, Julie Jones, Heidi
King, and James Oles for their advice during the research
phase of this project. Finally, Yaëlle Biro would like to thank
Giulia Paoletti for her critique of a first draft of her essay.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
This Bulletin and the exhibition it accompanies, “The Nelson A.
Rockefeller Vision: In Pursuit of the Best in the Arts of
Africa, Oceania, and the Americas,” reflect on an extraordi-
nary act of philanthropy that was also a catalyst for momen-
tous change in the art world. In establishing the Museum
of Primitive Art (MPA) in 1956 — the precursor to what is
today the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the
Americas (AAOA) at the Metropolitan Museum — Nelson
Rockefeller was a true pioneer, assembling what remains
the greatest collection of fine art from these disparate fields.
Perhaps even more important than this singular achievement,
however, was Rockefeller’s long campaign to place his collec-
tion at the Metropolitan Museum as a gift to the city and to
the world, which he finally achieved in 1969 after nearly forty
years of effort.
Rockefeller’s gift carried the unequivocal message
that artists from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas are equal
in every respect to those of their peers across the globe and
throughout history. Yet until that time there was, famously,
skepticism in the Western art world on this point as well as
resistance from earlier generations of Metropolitan directors
in viewing non-Western art as part of the institution’s mission.
Relying on his formidable powers of persuasion, Rockefeller
eventually brokered an agreement to transfer the collections,
staff, and library of the MPA to the Metropolitan, an astound-
ing triumph that fundamentally changed the character of the
Museum. Vast reaches of the globe were suddenly represented
under this roof for the first time, and the Metropolitan’s col-
lections became truly encyclopedic. Rockefeller’s prescience
and tenacity led not only to the founding of the Department
of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas but also to
the construction of the galleries in The Michael C. Rockefeller
Wing, opened to the public in 1982.
We take seriously our responsibility to build on the
collection that Rockefeller helped create so that it will con-
tinue to reflect the ever-expanding canon of art in these diverse
fields, which so appealed to Rockefeller’s imagination and
intellect. The authors of this Bulletin, all current or former
curators in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania,
and the Americas — Alisa LaGamma, Ceil and Michael E.
Pulitzer Curator in Charge; Joanne Pillsbury, Andrall E.
Pearson Curator; Eric Kjellgren, former Evelyn A. J. Hall and
John A. Friede Associate Curator; and Yaëlle Biro, assistant
curator — examine the impetus behind Rockefeller’s collect-
ing and underscore his passion for great art, no matter the
source. Rockefeller also appreciated creative expression as a
vehicle for connecting to and understanding the world at
large. Ultimately, he wanted peoples across the planet to feel
enfranchised through pride in being represented in one of
the world’s most influential and remarkable cultural institu-
tions. As we celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Rockefeller’s
founding of the Museum of Primitive Art, we pay tribute to
his sense of adventure, his wonder, and his drive to learn
about our fellow humans through their finest achievements.
It has been a privilege for the Metropolitan to partner in
that vision with Rockefeller and with his daughter, Mary
Rockefeller Morgan, who continues to inspire as a steward
of that legacy.
Thomas P. Campbell
Director, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Vision:
In Pursuit of the Best in the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas
Alisa LaGamma
Scion of one of the nation’s most significant philanthropic
families, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (1908–1979) is perhaps
best remembered for his decades spent in the political spot-
light. Elected to four consecutive terms as governor of the
state of New York (1959–73), he was then appointed vice
president under Gerald R. Ford and served from 1974 to 1977.
Rockefeller was equally at home in the art world, however,
and ultimately his greatest legacy may be his deeply felt advo-
cacy for the arts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Islands,
and the Americas (fig. 1). The Metropolitan Museum’s rich
and varied collections of these artistic traditions are regarded
as canonical. They constitute such an integral part of the
Metropolitan’s mission as an encyclopedic museum, in fact,
that few realize how their presence here is largely the legacy
of Rockefeller’s taste, tenacity, and vision.
Among the most formative influences that sparked
Rockefeller’s interests as a young man were his early travels
1. “Rocky as a Collector,” cover of the New York Times Magazine, May 18, 1969
4
abroad and his mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, one of the
founders of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1929.
Abby Rockefeller’s gallery within their home instilled in
Nelson an appreciation not only for contemporary art but
also for the African art forms that had influenced its develop-
ment. In 1930, on graduating from Dartmouth College,
Nelson joined the board of the Metropolitan Museum.
Ironically, the catalyst for his mother and her close associates
to establish MoMA had been the Metropolitan’s evident lack
of interest in avant-garde art. Her son, in turn, advocated at
the Metropolitan for institutional engagement with another
notable lacuna in the collection, Precolumbian art. Although
Nelson’s lobbying efforts on this front were thwarted by then-
director Herbert E. Winlock, he was not deterred. Following
in his mother’s footsteps, and with the encouragement of his
close friend and associate René d’Harnoncourt, Nelson went
on to conceive the founding of a cultural organization
devoted to the artistic traditions absent from the
Metropolitan’s collections.
Educated in Graz and Vienna, the urbane d’Harnoncourt
(fig. 2) had moved to Mexico after World War I and developed
a keen interest in Mexican folk art, a tradition he featured in a
groundbreaking exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in
1930. In 1936 he was appointed general manager of the Indian
Arts and Crafts Board, and five years later he joined the
Museum of Modern Art, eventually serving as its director
(1949–67). D’Harnoncourt, who shared Rockefeller’s enthu-
siasm for Precolumbian art, provided him with a methodol-
ogy for assembling a collection of African and Oceanic art,
and he served as cofounder and vice president of the pioneer-
ing institution they launched in 1954. The scope of this
museological Salon des Refusés was vast, encompassing a
diverse array of culturally distinct, non-Western art traditions.
Initially baptized “The Museum of Indigenous Art” in its orig-
inal charter, it was located in a town house adjoining
Rockefeller’s boyhood home, directly across from MoMA at
15 West 54th Street (fig. 3). Renamed the Museum of
Primitive Art (MPA), from the outset the institution strove
to study, collect, and exhibit the artistic traditions of Africa,
Oceania, and the Americas as works of fine art rather than
approach them through an ethnographic or anthropological
lens, the prevailing institutional tendencies that had long iso-
lated those traditions from the larger history of art. This fun-
damental shift is underscored in the MPA’s first press release,
dated February 21, 1957. Acknowledging that museums of
ethnology and “natural history have, of course, long shown
these arts,” Rockefeller continued:
2. René d’Harnoncourt, 1959
3. Museum of Primitive Art, ca. 1970
They have done so primarily to document their studies
of indigenous cultures. It is our purpose to supplement
their achievement. However, we do not wish to estab-
lish primitive art as a separate kind of category, but
rather to integrate it with all its amazing variety, into
what is already known of the arts of man. Our aim will
always be to select objects of outstanding beauty whose
rare quality is the equal of works shown in other muse-
ums of art throughout the world, and to exhibit them so
that everyone may enjoy them to the fullest measure.
Until that moment, interest in these traditions in the art
world had focused entirely on their relationship to modern-
ism. Art historian and critic Robert Goldwater’s (fig. 4) path-
breaking dissertation at Harvard University, “Primitivism and
Modern Painting” (1938), charted the influence of African,
Oceanic, and American precolonial traditions on twentieth-
century art in the West. D’Harnoncourt recommended to
Rockefeller that he recruit Goldwater, then a professor in the
4. Robert Goldwater with Museum of Primitive Art staff member Barbara A.
Brown and a Dogon male figure with raised arms, 1958
5
Department of Art History at Queens College, to be director
of the Museum of Primitive Art. In this role, starting in 1956,
Goldwater formulated a collection policy for the new museum
and oversaw an extensive program of landmark exhibitions
that introduced these traditions to the broader art world.
Rockefeller’s desire to incorporate these distinct cul-
tural traditions collectively into the mainstream of art history
paralleled developments in the academy. During the same
period, Paul S. Wingert, an art historian at Columbia
University, was among the first generation of scholars to
establish “primitive art” as a field of study. In his Primitive Art,
Its Traditions and Styles (1962), Wingert analyzed and defined
the scope of the artistic conventions developed by artists
working in Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in language
derived from the study of modern art. Yet this unwieldy
5. Page from René d’Harnoncourt’s notebook “Catalogue and Desiderata — ​
African Negro Art”
6
category was also being broken down into specific areas of
specialization through George Kubler’s fundamental scholar-
ship on Precolumbian and Ibero-American art at Yale
University, beginning in the 1940s, and Roy Sieber’s 1957 dis-
sertation at the University of Iowa, “African Tribal Sculpture,”
the first study in the United States focused on African art
history.
Throughout his life Nelson Rockefeller was a passionate
collector of art across many fields, but he was especially
responsive to sculpture as a medium of expression, once not-
ing, “My major interest was sculpture because plastic art to
me has the greatest strength and vitality.” 1 His collection of
modern art, while extensive, was also highly personal. In con-
trast, his method for pursuing works from Africa, Oceania,
and the Americas was systematic and professional. Early on
6. Deity figure (Zemí ). Dominican Republic (?), Taíno, ca. 1000. Ironwood
and shell; 27 x 8 ⅝ x 9 ⅛ in. (68.5 x 21.9 x 23.2 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller
Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.380)
d’Harnoncourt had devised for Rockefeller a method of
assembling a comprehensive survey of regional artistic genres
and advised him on which ones should be prioritized in note-
books titled “Catalogue and Desiderata.” Each notebook was
devoted to a different collecting area and included maps, bib-
liographies, and drawings of exemplary interpretations of
artistic forms to be acquired for the collection (fig. 5). As
articulated in the press release announcing the formation of
the Museum of Primitive Art, Rockefeller approached this
material first as fine art, emphasizing aesthetic quality above
all else, a philosophy that would guide the MPA’s collecting
practices and define its mission as an institution. Put simply by
Douglas Newton, an MPA curator and, later, first head of the
Metropolitan’s Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and
the Americas, “We look for quality within each element—the
best of everything.”
In 1954 a number of private individuals approached the
Museum of Primitive Art about acquiring significant works
from their collections. These offers came from as far afield as
the United Kingdom, where the owner of an exceptionally
important thousand-year-old Taíno deity figure proposed it
“for the new primitive museum” (fig. 6). Beginning in 1957
Goldwater provided Rockefeller with a steady stream of care-
fully considered memoranda recommending purchases of
African and Oceanic art, which he first reviewed with
d’Harnoncourt. (The paucity of this kind of commentary on
paper concerning acquisitions from the Americas may reflect
7. Queen Mother pendant mask (Iyoba). Edo peoples, Court of Benin, Nigeria,
the fact that decisions in this area occurred verbally between 16th century. Ivory, iron, and copper (?); 9 ⅜ x 5 x 3 ¼ in. (23.8 x 12.7 x 8.3 cm).
Rockefeller and d’Harnoncourt, or that Rockefeller was most The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A.
Rockefeller, 1972 (1978.412.323)
personally engaged with this part of the collection.) Among
the most expansive of these formal rationales was a proposal
dated December 31, 1957, making the case for the acquisition public alike. As René [d’Harnoncourt] has suggested, it is the
of an ivory pendant mask from the Court of Benin, now kind of object that would . . . have to be put permanently on
among the Metropolitan Museum’s most celebrated master- view; like the ‘Sleeping Gypsy’ of primitive art.”
pieces (fig. 7). In his brief, Goldwater argued persuasively for On September 17, 1958, the New York Times announced
the mask’s superiority to the renowned and nearly identical the Museum of Primitive Art’s unveiling of the mask, which
example in the British Museum: “I believe this mask sur- Rockefeller acquired for a record price. For Goldwater, this
passes it in delicacy of workmanship and penetration of singular acquisition came to “crystallize a policy” that the
expression. It is thus the best object of its kind known, nor MPA’s mission be that of “a Museum organized around per-
will any others ever turn up.”2 In speaking to its potential to manent exhibition galleries where outstanding masterpieces
transform the collection, Goldwater compared it to what was of each area will be continuously accessible to the public, and
then one of the most recognizable works at the Museum of other galleries with changing exhibitions.”
Modern Art, Henri Rousseau’s Sleeping Gypsy (1897): “The The following year Goldwater wrote to Rockefeller
purchase of this mask would give the Museum a permanent, alerting him to the opportunity of acquiring works from the
primary attraction—a popular masterpiece. It is one of those “legendary” collection of American-born British sculptor
objects that ‘has to be seen’ by scholars, art lovers, and the Sir Jacob Epstein before it was dispersed at auction. He

7
8. Sculptural element from a reliquary ensemble: Head (The Great Bieri). Fang peoples, Betsi group, Gabon, 19th–early 20th century. Wood, metal, and palm oil;
18 ¼ x 9 ¾ x 6 ⅝ in. (46.5 x 24.8 x 16.8 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.229)

8
prioritized a single piece of inestimable importance: the
sculptural element in the form of a head from a Fang reliquary
ensemble, known as “The Great Bieri” (fig. 8), which in the
preceding quarter century had become “a symbol of African
art,” to use Goldwater’s phrase. A year later, a follow-up memo
to Rockefeller, dated August 28, 1961, apprised him that
Epstein’s collection was to be sold privately by Parisian dealer
Charles Ratton and that the MPA and the Musée National
des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie, Paris, would be given first
pick. Goldwater urged Rockefeller to act on a list of five out-
standing works, including the Great Bieri, and submitted the
prices assigned to them by Ratton.
Goldwater celebrated the acquisition of the Great Bieri
with a publication dedicated to this singular, renowned work
of art, which opens with the following panegyric:
For every style, and every period, in the history of the
arts of mankind, a few works stand out above the rest.
Somehow they both contain and surpass all these quali-
ties which we value in the art of the culture from which
9. Cover of Robert Goldwater: A Memorial Exhibition (New York: Museum of
Primitive Art, 1973). Robert Goldwater Library, The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York
they come. They seem to have captured the ideal of
design and expression toward which many artists
[have] tended. We refer to these works as classic exam-
ples of their kind, and they impress themselves upon
our memory with a particular clarity. The GREAT
BIERI is such a work: it is the embodiment of Fang
sculpture, and one of the great classics of African art. 3
So significant was this acquisition for Goldwater that, upon
his death, the Great Bieri was featured on the front and back
covers of the catalogue of a memorial exhibition organized in
his honor, featuring twenty-seven works from the collection
of African sculpture “in which Robert Goldwater personally
took the greatest interest, as collector and scholar” (fig. 9). 4
For Rockefeller, the works of art in his collection were
inextricably linked to their places of origin, and he was
always eager to learn more about them through travel to the
source. Rockefeller’s first love was Precolumbian art, and
beginning in the 1930s he traveled extensively in Mexico and
Latin America, dedicating his energies to fostering economic
development. Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt he was
appointed to the newly created position of coordinator of the
Office of Inter-American Affairs (1940), and he later served
as assistant secretary of state for the Office of American
Republic Affairs (1944). Rockefeller took pride in the fact
that by the end of his career, he had visited every nation in
South and Central America save Paraguay.
Rockefeller believed that the Museum of Primitive Art
had an important role to play in generating outreach and
inspiring pride among the countries then emerging from
colonialism and whose works were in its collection. He had
first traveled to Africa on an ambitious multistop visit with
his family in 1956, and on September 30, 1960, Rockefeller,
by then governor of New York, led the U.S. delegation as
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s representative to the cel-
ebration of Nigerian independence. A highlight of that stay
was time spent with archaeologist and curator Bernard Fagg
at the National Museum in Lagos (see fig. 48). Directly upon
Rockefeller’s return, the MPA considered organizing an exhi-
bition “to contribute to Nigerian-American understanding
and friendship.” Ultimately, it was decided to broaden the
scope of the exhibition to include sixteen new African states
represented in the collection, for a total of one hundred
works of art. At the launch of the exhibition, “The Traditional
Arts of Africa’s New Nations,” on May 16, 1961, the U.N. rep-
resentatives from those states were invited to meet the press
9

10. Opening reception for “The Traditional Arts of Africa’s New Nations,”
May 16, 1961. Left to right: Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller; Adlai Stevenson,
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and Alhaji Muhammad Ngileruma,
Nigerian ambassador to the United Nations
11. Michael C. Rockefeller, kneeling on ground with recording equipment,
surrounded by a dance circle in the highlands of western New Guinea, 1961
10
along with Rockefeller and the American ambassador to
the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson (fig. 10). The ongoing
transition from colonialism to independence was also marked
by the loan of major African works to important exhibi-
tions in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe),
in 1962, and Dakar, Senegal, in 1966 (see Yaëlle Biro’s essay
“The Museum of Primitive Art in Africa at the Time of
Independence” on pp. 38–46). The exhibition in Dakar,
“L ’Art nègre: sources, évolution, expansion,” which later trav-
eled to Paris, was held in conjunction with the First World
Festival of Negro Arts, presided over by Senegalese president
Léopold Sédar Senghor and featuring some twenty-three
works from the MPA’s collection.
Nelson’s son Michael shared his father’s passion for
non-Western art and served as a member of the MPA board.
On his graduation from Harvard, in 1960, Michael partici-
pated in an expedition of the university’s Peabody Museum of
Archaeology and Ethnology to record a documentary film in
Papua New Guinea, where he stayed on to research and col-
lect the art of the Asmat peoples (fig. 11). During a subsequent
visit to the region, Michael had his life tragically cut short
12. “The Art of the Asmat, New Guinea: Collected by Michael C. Rockefeller,” at the Museum of Modern Art, 1962
when he disappeared during a boating accident. The more
than six hundred works he gathered were first presented in the
1962 MPA exhibition “The Art of the Asmat, New Guinea:
Collected by Michael C. Rockefeller,” held at the Museum of
Modern Art (fig. 12), and today are enshrined as his legacy in
the Metropolitan Museum’s Michael C. Rockefeller Wing.
For more than two decades, the MPA assembled the
collection of record for art from Africa, Oceania, and the
Americas. Devoted to winning the hearts and minds of the
public for these relatively obscure and unfamiliar artistic tra-
ditions, Nelson Rockefeller relied on his prominent public
profile to draw attention to the art. He even underwrote the
services of one of New York’s early public-relations firms,
Lobsenz and Company, Inc., to generate press coverage. In
a 1960 report to Rockefeller summarizing her achievements
that year, the firm’s founder, Amelia Lobsenz, noted that
she had secured two separate ten-minute spots on NBC’s
Today Show with David Garroway, illustrated stories in both
Newsweek and Time, frequent coverage in the New York Times,
pieces in two issues of Vogue, and another feature in Glamour,
along with various other initiatives to increase attendance.
Throughout the MPA years, however, Rockefeller’s ultimate
goal—really the same goal he had nurtured since the begin-
ning of his career—was to have the non-Western collection
he was forming become part of the Metropolitan Museum.
Accordingly, d’Harnoncourt, before his death, in 1968,
assisted in brokering an agreement with Metropolitan direc-
tor Thomas Hoving to create a new department within the
Met that would encompass not only the holdings of the MPA
but also Rockefeller’s personal collections. In a letter to
Rockefeller dated December 8, 1967, d’Harnoncourt broke
the news:
Two days ago I had a long meeting with Tom Hoving
and am surprised and delighted to report a marked
improvement in the Met’s attitude to our proposal. First
of all, Tom definitely invited us to give a major exhibi-
tion of the Collection of the Museum of Primitive Art
11
 13. Nelson A. Rockefeller at the
press conference announcing the
donation of the Museum of
Primitive Art collections to The
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
May 10, 1969

14. Architectural rendering of

the gallery of African art in the
Michael C. Rockefeller Wing,
1979–80

15. Gallery of African art in the

Michael C. Rockefeller Wing,
July 1982

12
 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1970 when they
expect to have a gala year celebrating their one hun-
dredth anniversary. . . . Tom also implied to me that he
had spoken to a number of Trustees and had found con-
siderable interest in providing space for the Collection
of the MPA.
On the original copy of this letter, among Rockefeller’s papers
at the Rockefeller Archive Center, are extensive annotations
by its recipient, including the word “excellent” written next to
this news.
On May 10, 1969, an exhibition of works from the
Museum of Primitive Art opened at the Metropolitan, for-
mally introducing the Met’s audience to the Rockefeller
“primitive” collections. Titled “Art of Oceania, Africa, and the
Americas from the Museum of Primitive Art,” it included
eight hundred works, displayed in more than seventeen
rooms, and was described at the time as “the most important
exhibition of primitive art ever held.” The audio tour featured
an introduction narrated by Governor Rockefeller himself:
My own interest is purely aesthetic. The beauty and fas-
cination of form, texture, color, and shape provide
never-ending delight and excitement. Whatever we
can learn about the art displayed in these galleries, the
objects themselves transcend all explanation. In that
sense they are like all works of art, and it is appropriate
that they be looked at among other supreme artistic
achievements of the world.
During the press conference for the opening (fig. 13),
Rockefeller announced that the entire collection of the
Museum of Primitive Art would be integrated into that of
the Metropolitan, finally bringing to fruition his ambition
from nearly forty years before. When the Museum of
Primitive Art closed, in December 1974, its 3,500 works of
art as well as its library and much of its staff were transferred
to the Metropolitan, a process of assimilation that culminated
in the completion of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing eight
years later. Sadly, Rockefeller died before the wing dedicated
to the memory of his son was opened to the public, in
January 1982 (figs. 14, 15).
If we look back on this extraordinary act of generosity
in terms of basic numbers, Nelson Rockefeller gave to the
Metropolitan Museum 417 works from Africa, 1,068 from
Oceania, and 1,054 from the Americas, an incomparable
13
14
foundation on which to build for the future. Indeed, today
the collection has grown to 11,768 works of art, including
2,592 from Africa, 2,616 from Oceania, and 6,458 from
the Americas, and it continues to be added to, often in fortu-
itous new directions. The final item on Goldwater’s short list
of standouts from the Epstein collection, for example, was
a sculpture of a couple from Madagascar, the summit of a
ritual post originally positioned at the center of a Malagasy
village. “This is a supplementary recommendation,” he wrote
to Rockefeller. “Its price is high. However, it is unique,
extremely well-known, and far and away the best example of
its style. There will never be another similar object. It too
would be a ‘symbolic’ addition to our collections.” When
Rockefeller elected to pass on the sculpture, which was offered
at the same price as the Great Bieri, it was acquired by famed
collector Carlo Monzino. Nearly half a century later, in 2001,
the Metropolitan purchased the work from the Monzino
heirs, filling a significant gap in the collection with an out-
standing icon from that tradition (fig. 16).
Although across much of sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania,
and the Americas the textile arts are a major form of expres-
sion, Rockefeller’s personal affinity for the idiom of sculpture
meant that those two-dimensional traditions were not always
the highest priority for him. Expanding the Metropolitan’s
collection in this area has thus been a goal over the last decade
in order to provide a more balanced appreciation of regional
creativity. William Goldstein donated Central African textiles
and championed enrichment of the Museum’s collection of
African textiles with exceptional examples (fig. 17). These
contributions were complemented in the Oceanic area by
early Indonesian textiles given by Anita Spertus and Robert
Holmgren (fig. 18) as well as by Fred and Rita Richman.
By broadening its scope to embrace new artistic genres,
the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the
Americas at the Metropolitan has revisited the MPA’s original
conceptual emphasis on “transformative” masterpieces: works,
it was believed, that epitomize creative expression in a given
tradition and distill it in a single, exemplary artistic interpre-
tation. For example, in 1967 the MPA had deaccessioned at

16. Couple. Sakalava peoples, Menabe region, Madagascar, 17th–late 18th

century. Wood and pigment; H. 39 in. (99.1 cm). Purchase, Lila Acheson
Wallace, Daniel and Marian Malcolm, and James J. Ross Gifts, 2001
(2001.408)

17. Ceremonial skirt (Ntchak). Kuba peoples, Bushoong group, Democratic

Republic of the Congo, late 19th century. Raffia palm fiber and natural dyes;
167 x 26 in. (424.2 x 66 cm). Rogers Fund, 2004 (2004.254)

15
 18. Ceremonial banner (Palepai Maju). Lampung, Indonesia, probably 18th
century. Fiber, ceramic and glass beads, cloth, and nassa shells; 162 x 48 ½ in.
(411.5 x 123.2 cm). Gift of Anita E. Spertus and Robert J. Holmgren, in honor
of Douglas Newton, 1990 (1990.335.28)

Detail of fig. 18 showing beadwork

auction a critical mass of works, including, unfortunately, a

monumental sculptural couple from Côte d’Ivoire that
reflected the ideal of male-female duality underlying Senufo
society and religious practice. 5 This sculpture, so the argu-
ment went, was redundant alongside the exceptional single
male figure from another Senufo pairing (fig. 19), also in the
collection, and should be sold to generate funds for new
acquisitions. The shortcomings of that strategy became all too
evident once the MPA collection had been folded into the
Metropolitan’s deep bench of Western art. Today, rather than
arbitrarily designate a single creation as a definitive landmark,
we take for granted that an art-historical collection ideally
should embrace the plurality of interpretative approaches that
artists in a given tradition have developed in response to a
particular movement.
Sixty years after the founding of the Museum of
Primitive Art, Nelson Rockefeller’s pioneering vision that
art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas might occupy a
key place at the Metropolitan has come full circle. Just as
Rockefeller’s generosity allowed what he considered a great
institution to fulfill the promise of its mission, we aspire to
the continued development of a truly encyclopedic collection
that at once expands and deepens our understanding of this
vast and highly diverse canon of artistic traditions.

16
19. Male Poro figure (Pombia). Senufo peoples, Tyebara group, Lataha, Département de Korhogo, Région des Savanes, Côte d’Ivoire, 19th–mid-20th century.
Wood; 42 ½ x 8 ⅞ x 10 ½ in. (108 x 22.4 x 26.7 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1965 (1978.412.315)

17
The Pan-American:
Nelson Rockefeller and the Arts of Ancient Latin America
Joanne Pillsbury

In the late 1930s, an energetic young trustee of the

Metropolitan Museum argued passionately that ancient
American art—sculptures, ceramic vessels, textiles, and orna-
ments of the Precolumbian cultures of Latin America—
should be included in the Museum’s exhibitions. Despite the
acquisition of Precolumbian works of art shortly after the
founding of the Metropolitan, in 1870, by 1914 the Museum
had decided that such works were more appropriate in the
context of a natural history museum. As a result, the ancient
American collection was sent across Central Park to the
American Museum of Natural History, as a long-term loan,
and later another set of objects went to the Brooklyn
Museum. That young trustee, Nelson A. Rockefeller, would
ultimately prevail in his quest to have Precolumbian works
viewed as fine art at the Metropolitan Museum, but victory
would come only some forty years later.
By his own account, Rockefeller’s interest in
Precolumbian art began on a vacation in Mexico in 1933.
Drawn there by his fascination with Mexican muralists such
as Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, he immersed
himself in the study of the region’s ancient and contemporary
art. Exposure to Maya ruins and other remains of the pre-
Hispanic past in Mexico was the beginning of what would
become a lifelong passion. On his return to New York,
Rockefeller tried to interest the Metropolitan in cosponsor-
ing, with the American Museum of Natural History, a series
of archaeological expeditions. The Museum’s rejection of the
plan only increased his keen desire, and Rockefeller set out to
accomplish these goals on his own.6
The groundwork for Nelson’s engagement with
Mexican art was laid in part by his mother, Abby Aldrich
Rockefeller, one of the founders of the Museum of Modern
Art (MoMA) and an avid collector with broad-ranging inter-
ests, including African, modern European, and folk art. She,
too, was an admirer of Diego Rivera, and in 1931 she had orga-
nized an exhibition of his work at MoMA. Nelson, who also
served on MoMA’s board, promoted the selection of Rivera
to paint a mural at Rockefeller Center, a commission that
came to a famously disastrous end when the artist added a
portrait of Lenin to the composition. Rockefeller tried to
20. Nelson A. Rockefeller with Mary Todhunter Clark Rockefeller, Winthrop
Rockefeller, and others in Curaçao, off the coast of Venezuela, 1937
dissuade Rivera from including it in the final version, but
Rivera refused. Anxious to broker a compromise, Rockefeller
suggested relocating the mural to MoMA, but this, too, was to
no avail, and the mural was destroyed in 1934. 7
Until the late 1930s Rockefeller’s relatively limited
engagement with Precolumbian art was an outgrowth of his
interest in the affinity of modern artists for what was often
called “primitive” art. But after 1937 his involvement in Latin
America grew, along with his fascination with the artistic tra-
ditions of the region. Drawn by family business to Venezuela
that year (fig. 20), he visited other countries in Latin America
during the two-month trip, including Peru, where the “tre-
mendous archaeological richness fired [his] imagination and
interest.” 8 Rockefeller was entranced by Peru’s textile tradi-
tions, both ancient and modern. In Cuzco he purchased “vast
armloads” of weavings, and in Lima, through his acquain-
tance with the noted Peruvian archaeologist Julio C. Tello, he
viewed some of the world’s most spectacular ancient textiles.9
Tello and his colleagues had recently recovered some four
hundred mummy bundles from a necropolis in the Paracas
Peninsula, south of Lima. The mummy bundles, now known
to date to the second half of the first millennium B.C., con-
tained the remains of individuals enveloped in layers of

18
textiles. The finest examples were garments woven with
richly saturated colors, often with intricate embroidery over
the weaving. The bundles were stored in poor conditions
in Lima, however, and Rockefeller threw his support behind
Tello’s efforts to conserve and properly house them. In
return, Rockefeller was given four of the mummy bundles,
which he brought back to New York with the intention of
giving them to the Metropolitan. But having no curator with
the expertise to look after them, the Metropolitan declined
the gift, and they were delivered to the American Museum of
Natural History.10
Knowing that the Metropolitan had supported archaeo-
logical research in Egypt, Rockefeller hoped to interest the
Museum in developing fieldwork in Latin America as well.
Instead, his support was channeled through the Institute of
Andean Research, an advisory body founded in 1937 by
archaeologists based at several institutions, including the
American Museum of Natural History. In addition to provid-
ing financial support for projects in Peru, Rockefeller later
supported Alberto Ruz Lhuillier’s excavations at the Maya
site of Palenque, in Chiapas, Mexico. His contributions,
which supplemented funding from the Mexican government,
led to spectacular new insights into Maya culture, including
21. Bowl. Nasca culture, Peru, 1st–4th century. Ceramic; H. 2 ⅜ in. (6 cm), Diam. 6 ½ in. (16.5 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest
of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.1105)
the discovery in 1948 of the tomb of the Maya ruler K’inich
Janaab’ Pakal. In later years Rockefeller further supported
archaeological research through exhibitions, including one in
1966 on recent findings at Tikal in Guatemala.
Among Rockefeller’s first acquisitions of Precolumbian
art were modest ceramic vessels from coastal Peru and a num-
ber of Peruvian textiles. He lent the latter to the Peruvian gen-
eral consul for exhibition at Peru’s pavilion at the 1939–40
New York World’s Fair. While there is some evidence that
Rockefeller acquired several effigy bottles from the Moche
and Chimú cultures in 1938, according to his own recollec-
tions he purchased his first Precolumbian works of art in
Buenos Aires in 1939, including a Nasca ceramic bowl with a
band of lizards painted in ceramic slip around the exterior
(fig. 21).11 The Nasca culture, now known to have flourished on
the coast of Peru south of Lima in the first six centuries A.D.,
had only recently been identified at the time of the acquisi-
tion, and aerial photography—pioneered in Peru by Robert
Shippee and George Johnson—had just begun to reveal the
extent of the monumental geoglyphs created on the coastal
desert by the Nasca peoples. With their bright slip-painted
designs of desert fauna, the small bowls were thus part of the
rich, newly revealed history of the ancient Americas.
19
 But Rockefeller saw such objects not just as testaments upon the outbreak of war in Europe, which he feared would
to history but as works of art in their own right. Along with disrupt the usual flow of trade and make Latin America
the diplomat and collector Robert Woods Bliss, Rockefeller increasingly vulnerable to incursions of European fascism.
fought for the recognition of Precolumbian art as art with In 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed
aesthetic merit rather than as specimens more suitable for a Rockefeller, just thirty-two at the time, coordinator of the
natural-history museum.12 Bliss, a generation older than Office of Inter-American Affairs: a new government body,
Rockefeller, was an ally in the belief in Pan-American independent of the Department of State, that was intended to
unity—the strengthening of hemispheric ties in the face of foster economic development in the region and strengthen a
the spread of European fascism at the outbreak of World sense of common heritage and purpose across the hemi-
War II—and later a rival in collecting Precolumbian art. sphere. Cultural exchange was a key aspect of the office, and
Both had faith in art as a key component of diplomacy and Rockefeller was resourceful in developing public-private ini-
worked together on initiatives of the Office of Inter- tiatives and exchanges of cultural figures, from university pro-
American Affairs, a wartime body devoted to public diplo- fessors to Hollywood producers.14 His efforts were greeted
macy across the Americas. Bliss was adamant that his own initially with dismay by the Department of State, but ulti-
collection of ancient American art be seen as fine art, first at mately his approach became influential in future U.S. forays
the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, in 1942, and later at the in public diplomacy.15
National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where it was on Strategic interests, such as the development of trans-
rotating display from 1947 until 1962. portation infrastructures—rail systems and airstrips, essential
Elected president of the board of trustees of the in case of an expansion of the war’s hostilities—were clearly
Museum of Modern Art in 1940, Rockefeller became closely an important component of his new post, but Rockefeller
involved that year with the exhibition “Twenty Centuries of also demonstrated a genuine concern regarding what he saw
Mexican Art,” a sweeping survey of thousands of years of as a lack of cultural understanding between the United States
Precolumbian, colonial, modern, and folk art organized with and Latin America. From his first experiences in Venezuela,
the Mexican government. As with MoMA’s earlier exhibition
“American Sources of Modern Art” (1933), the Precolumbian
world was viewed through a modernist lens. The exhibition
downplayed aspects of Precolumbian culture that may have
been distasteful to U.S. audiences, such as human sacrifice,
and instead promoted the Precolumbian world as part of a
common legacy for all Americans across the hemisphere. In
the wake of the exhibition, Rockefeller tried to persuade
MoMA to acquire the folk and indigenous arts of the New
World, a desire fulfilled only through a series of temporary
exhibitions organized into the early 1950s. “Twenty Centuries
of Mexican Art” was crucial in other ways, however. Intended
in part to foster deeper ties with Mexico at a time of tension
over Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas’s expropriation of
foreign oil companies operating in his country, the exhibition
was a harbinger of Rockefeller’s remarkable efforts in public
diplomacy in Latin America during the war years.13
By 1940 Rockefeller had spent a considerable amount
of time in Latin America in pursuit of his family’s interests in
the oil industry and related businesses, and he was increas-
ingly comfortable in the Spanish language as well as with
Latin American culture in general. He had grown concerned, 22. Nelson A. Rockefeller and Frida Kahlo at Tizapán, home of the artists
however, about the possible destabilization of the region Miguel and Rosa Covarrubias, outside Mexico City, 1943

20
where he had discovered that most foreign oil company
employees neither learned Spanish nor made attempts to
integrate within the broader communities in which they
worked, Rockefeller fought against a prevailing ignorance and
mistrust between the United States and Latin America.16 The
cultural initiatives were not all critically acclaimed,17 but
overall the program was successful in increasing awareness
of cultural traditions between regions, if not true understand-
ing. As part of his job, Rockefeller traveled widely in Latin
America between 1941 and 1945, working intimately with
political and business leaders but also forging close ties with
artists and intellectuals, establishing friendships that endured
for years (fig. 22).18
One of the fortuitous benefits of Rockefeller’s work on
“Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art” was that he met René
d’Harnoncourt, a Viennese chemist turned curator who had
assembled a notable collection of folk art while living in
Mexico in the late 1920s. The two became close friends after
1944 through their work at the Museum of Modern Art,
where d’Harnoncourt eventually became director. Prior to
Rockefeller’s friendship with d’Harnoncourt, his collecting
interests in the Precolumbian field were enthusiastic but rela-
tively modest; acquisitions were made as opportunities arose,
often in the course of his travels. With the war winding down
Rockefeller had more time to devote to his collection, and in
d’Harnoncourt he now had a deeply knowledgeable adviser.
In later years Rockefeller described his interest in art as
“an [a]esthetic experience . . . not an intellectual one.” 19
D’Harnoncourt not only gave Rockefeller’s growing collec-
tion direction and shape, he developed lists of desiderata,
23. Female figurine. Chupícuaro, Central Mexico, 3rd century B.C.–A.D. 4th
including detailed drawings and photographs of particularly century. Ceramic and pigment; H. 4 ⅜ in. (11 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller
good examples of certain types of sculptures. But the final Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.966)

decisions always lay with Rockefeller, whose visceral response

to works of art was palpable. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., founding
director of the Museum of Modern Art, remarked that “Nelson
needs art more than any man I know. Works of art give him a
deep, almost therapeutic delight and refreshment.” 20
Well aware of modern artists’ affinity for other-than-
Western art, Rockefeller made selections of Precolumbian
objects that often dovetailed with the collecting habits of
artists such as Henry Moore and Diego Rivera. Among his
earliest acquisitions of Mexican sculpture, for example, were
stone figures from Guerrero, characterized by clean, strong
lines and minimal detail.21 In 1951 Rockefeller acquired a
group of forty ceramic figurines from Esther Scheinman, who
had once worked with the New York antiquarian Joseph
Brummer. Said to be from sites in the Valley of Mexico, these
figurines (fig. 23) are now known to be more than two thou-
sand years old and of great importance for understanding the
development of complex society in ancient Mexico. Such
modest works had been of little interest until the 1930s, when
artists such as Rivera and Miguel Covarrubias began to rescue
them from sites rapidly being built over as Mexico City
expanded outward.
By the late 1940s Rockefeller was making major acquisi-
tions in Precolumbian art. He purchased works largely from
New York–based dealers, including Julius Carlebach and John
Wise, but he also patronized the Los Angeles gallery of Earl
Stendahl, a rising West Coast dealer of both Precolumbian

21
and modern art. In addition, Rockefeller acquired pieces The first exhibitions at the Museum of Primitive Art
from individuals, such as the archaeologist and art historian encompassed works from all three of its major collecting
Herbert Spinden and the artist-dealer William Spratling. areas: Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (fig. 27). As the col-
Beyond his long-standing relationship with d’Harnoncourt, lection grew, and expertise in these fields developed, more
Rockefeller was advised in these purchases by two archaeolo- specialized exhibitions were planned. Wide-ranging exhibi-
gists from the American Museum of Natural History—Junius tions of Precolumbian gold (1958–59), stone sculpture of
Bird on South America and Gordon Ekholm on Mexico and Mexico (1959), and textiles of ancient Peru (1963) gave way
Central America—who served as “consulting fellows” and were to increasingly scholarly investigations reflecting develop-
on call for advice as the need arose. ments in archaeology. The 1963–64 exhibition “Art of
Exhibitions are often catalysts in the formation of col- Empire: The Inca of Peru,” organized by Julie Jones, was the
lections, and by 1953, when Rockefeller’s collection was first in the Western Hemisphere to feature the art of one of
shown at the venerable Century Association in New York,
his had finally come of age (fig. 24). The exhibition, titled
“Primitive Sculpture from the Collection of Nelson A.
Rockefeller,” was in many ways the foundation for the devel-
opment of the Museum of Primitive Art (MPA), which would
be chartered the following year. While d’Harnoncourt, by
then director of the Museum of Modern Art, had continued to
organize exhibitions of Precolumbian art there—including
the 1954 “Ancient Arts of the Andes,” with loans from
Rockefeller—both Rockefeller and d’Harnoncourt felt that it
was time for a new institution dedicated to the arts of Africa,
Oceania, and the Americas. Initially called the Museum of
Indigenous Art, the new institution was later renamed the
Museum of Primitive Art because Rockefeller and the trustees
felt too many people would associate the word “indigenous”
with “indigent.” 22 Still smarting from the Metropolitan’s deci-
sion decades earlier to exclude Precolumbian art from its
holdings, Rockefeller was deliberate in defining the purview
of the MPA as “the important art forms not included in the
Met’s cognizance of the past.” 23
The Museum of Primitive Art was housed in a Beaux-
Arts town house adjacent to Rockefeller’s boyhood home,
directly across the street from the Museum of Modern Art.
The gray stone facade, with its bow window, was left
unchanged, but the interiors were converted into simple,
minimalist spaces (fig. 25). Rockefeller’s growing collection,
by then totaling some five hundred objects, was its core, but
the new institution soon attracted major gifts, including a
sumptuous feathered tabard from the south coast of Peru,
given by John Wise in 1956 (fig. 26). The tabard, a garment
probably once worn by a local lord in the centuries just before
the rise of the Inca Empire, displays hallmarks of what would
later become imperial iconography, such as the chevron pat- 24. “Primitive Sculpture from the Collection of Nelson A. Rockefeller” at the
Century Association, New York, 1953
tern and llamas, intricately rendered by stitching thousands of
bird feathers to a cotton backing. 25. “Selected Works from the Collection” at the Museum of Primitive Art, 1957

22
26. Feathered tabard. Far south coast, Peru, 13th–14th century. Cotton and
feathers; 44 ½ x 49 in. (113 x 124.5 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial
Collection, Gift of John Wise, 1956 (1978.412.20)

27. Nelson A. Rockefeller and Robert Goldwater standing by a display case

with Precolumbian textiles at the Museum of Primitive Art, spring 1958

the world’s great ancient states. One highlight of the show,

which drew from public and private collections in New York
as well as museums in the United States, Europe, and Latin
America, was a small silver female figurine, complete with
her original woolen garments, that had been found a decade
earlier atop Chile’s Cerro el Plomo, deposited by the Inca at
nearly 18,000 feet above sea level.
Rockefeller’s collecting may have begun modestly, but
by the 1960s it occasionally took a spectacular turn, including
the acquisition of two exceptional Maya sculptures in 1962.

23
28. Mirror-bearer. Maya culture, Guatemala or Mexico, 6th century. Wood and red hematite; 14 ⅛ x 9 x 9 in. (35.9 x 22.9 x 22.9 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller
Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.1063)

24
29. Relief with enthroned ruler. Maya culture, Guatemala or Mexico, 8th century. Limestone and paint; 35 x 34 ½ x 2 ¾ in. (88.9 x 87.6 x 7 cm). The Michael C.
Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.1047)

The first, a wood seated figure that possibly represents a Maya
lord’s dwarf, who once held a mirror, is a unique testament to
a sculptural tradition that rarely survives in the tropical cli-
mate of the Maya region of Mexico and Guatemala (fig. 28).
The second, a relief panel with vestiges of its polychrome
painting, gives viewers a sense of the original appearance of
Maya stone sculpture (fig. 29). Three years later, Rockefeller’s
acquisitions of Olmec ceramics prompted the
groundbreaking exhibition “The Jaguar’s Children: Pre-
Classic Central Mexico.” The Olmec, the earliest of Mexico’s
great civilizations, flourishing in the first millennium b.c.,
was paradoxically the last to be recognized by archaeologists.
The exhibition thus captured the tangible excitement of
archaeological discovery just as it was beginning to unfold the
complex history of Olmec culture. One of Rockefeller’s
prized acquisitions, a striking seated figure in ceramic with its

25

hand raised to its mouth (fig. 30), was featured on the cover
of the accompanying exhibition catalogue (fig. 31).
Despite the Museum of Primitive Art’s many successes,
in the late 1960s Rockefeller returned to his quest to find a
permanent home for the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the
Americas in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the years
since the Metropolitan’s indefinite loan of Precolumbian
material to the American Museum of Natural History, in 1914,
the Museum had made a number of desultory attempts to
include Precolumbian art in a sustained way in its programs,
but such efforts were generally characterized as reflecting a
26
30. Seated figure. Olmec culture
(Las Bocas), Mexico, 12th – 9th century B.C.
Ceramic and pigment; 13 ⅜ x 12 ½ x 5 ¾ in.
(34 x 31.8 x 14.6 cm). The Michael C.
Rockefeller Memorial Collection,
Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979
(1979.206.1134)
31. Cover of The Jaguar’s Children:
Pre-Classic Central Mexico (New York:
Museum of Primitive Art, 1965)
“lack of interest.” 24 Most of the Precolumbian collections,
nominally under the care of the American Wing, continued
in their indefinite residencies at the American Museum of
Natural History and the Brooklyn Museum, although
Precolumbian Peruvian textiles, many donated by George
Pratt and housed in the Textile Department, remained at the
Metropolitan through the century.25 D’Harnoncourt’s 1967
agreement with director Thomas Hoving created a depart-
ment at the Metropolitan dedicated to these fields, one whose
core holdings would consist of Rockefeller’s personal collec-
tion as well as those of the Museum of Primitive Art.
 D’Harnoncourt immediately began planning an exhibi-
tion of the MPA’s collection at the Metropolitan, but he did
not live to see either its opening, in 1969, or the announce-
ment of the transfer of the MPA’s staff and its collection of
some 3,500 works (fig. 32). D’Harnoncourt’s unexpected
death was a blow to Rockefeller, who described his collecting
activities with d’Harnoncourt as among the happiest and
most rewarding endeavors of his life.26 Yet even as the pace of
Rockefeller’s acquisitions slowed measurably, he was still able
to pull off one last coup before the transfer occurred: a group
of ancient Peruvian objects made of gold, silver, and copper
(as well as complex combinations of those metals) known as
the Loma Negra find, ornaments that most likely belonged to
a high-level lord buried on Peru’s north coast around A.D. 400
(fig. 33).
In what must have been a particularly gratifying moment
for Rockefeller, one of the last exhibitions at the Museum of 32. Nelson A. Rockefeller viewing Maya objects at the press conference
announcing transfer of the Museum of Primitive Art collections to
Primitive Art before it closed was a show of Precolumbian The Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 1969
works from the Metropolitan Museum’s collections, largely
unseen since 1914. Some forty years after his first campaign to
include Precolumbian art at the Museum, Rockefeller’s wish Museum’s collection of ancient American art, remarkable for
had finally come true. More than that, with the opening of its depth and quality, became a touchstone for our under-
the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing in 1982, the Metropolitan standing of these great traditions.

33. Pair of ear flares. Moche culture (Loma Negra), 390–450. Silver, gold, gilded copper, and shell; Diam. 4 in. (10 cm), 4 ¼ in. (10.8 cm). The Michael C.
Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.1245, .1246)

27
Returning to the Source:
Michael C. Rockefeller, Douglas Newton, and the Arts of Oceania
Eric Kjellgren

One of the most distinctive facets of the history of the

Museum of Primitive Art’s collection of Oceanic art is the
extent to which many of its most prominent works were
acquired not on the art market but directly from their original
source, the island of New Guinea. This was undertaken by
two individuals who, apart from Nelson Rockefeller himself,
were the most pivotal figures in the formation of the muse-
um’s Oceanic collection: Nelson’s son Michael C. Rockefeller,
who collected and documented the arts of the Asmat region
in 1961, and Douglas Newton, the first curator and later direc-
tor of the MPA, who made a series of collecting trips to the
Sepik River region beginning in 1964.
New Guinea, situated directly north of Australia, is
home to more than eight hundred different peoples and a
greater profusion of art traditions than any other Pacific island.
With the notable exception of the Asmat region, many coastal
areas of the island had been in contact with the West since the
late nineteenth century. Much of the interior, however,
remained sparsely contacted and explored by outsiders until
after World War II, and it was not until the 1950s that the
Dutch, who controlled the western half of the island, including
the Asmat region, and the Australians, who governed the east-
ern half, including the Sepik River region, began to exert colo-
nial control over many of the interior’s peoples. In the process,
they outlawed the customary warfare that formed the impetus
for many of the island’s sculptural traditions. These govern-
ment pacification programs, combined with the increasing
success of missionaries in converting many groups to
Christianity, resulted in large numbers of works, no longer in
use in their original contexts, becoming available for collection
and entering the art market. Some of these art forms, includ-
ing the spectacular hook figures of the Korewori River region
(fig. 34), which the Museum of Primitive Art was among the
earliest institutions to acquire, were previously unknown in
the West and today are considered among the most iconic
masterworks of Oceanic sculpture.
Thus, by the beginning of the 1960s, opportunities 34. Figure (Yipwon). Yimam people, Korewori River, Middle Sepik region,
Papua New Guinea, 19th century. Wood and paint; 96  ¾ x 5 x 9 in. (245.7 x 12.7 x
remained to acquire important works representing many of 22.9 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A.
New Guinea’s outstanding sculptural traditions either directly Rockefeller, 1972 (1978.412.732)

28
from their source communities or from the increasing num-
ber of Western traders, missionaries, and colonial officials
who began to visit even the remotest areas of the island in
search of pieces for the art market. It was to this recently
opened and comparatively brief window of opportunity to
collect highly significant works of art—as well as information
on their imagery, contexts, and uses in situ—that first Michael
Rockefeller and then Douglas Newton turned their attention.
Born in 1938, Michael Rockefeller (fig. 35) grew up, by
his father’s account, “surrounded by not only Modern Art but
by Primitive Art,” and, as a teenager in the 1950s, he regularly
accompanied his father on visits to dealers and galleries in
New York. In 1959, while still an undergraduate at Harvard
(where he majored in history), Michael became a trustee of
the Museum of Primitive Art. He graduated the following
year, and in 1961 he joined the Harvard-Peabody New Guinea
Expedition as a photographer and sound technician. Led
by filmmaker Robert Gardner, the expedition sought to
record the life and, in particular, warfare of the Dani people of
the Baliem Valley, in the highlands of western New Guinea.
Arriving in April, Michael recorded the sound that accompa-
nied Gardner’s footage of the Dani for what became the 1963
documentary film Dead Birds, still considered a classic of
anthropological filmmaking, and shot more than four thou-
sand black-and-white and numerous color photographs. 27
But the Dani, like nearly all highland New Guinea peoples,
had no significant tradition of wood sculpture, and Michael 35. Michael C. Rockefeller, 1961
was intent on collecting such works for the Museum of
Primitive Art. Accordingly, he temporarily left the expedition the works Rockefeller collected were thus purchased not with
for three weeks in June and July, accompanied by his college cash but with trade goods such as tobacco, metal axes, knives,
friend Samuel Putnam, and journeyed to the island’s south- and other imported items. In a typescript of his journal from
west coast with the purpose of acquiring objects from the his first trip, now in the Archive of the Museum of Primitive
Asmat people, among New Guinea’s most prolific and accom- Art, Rockefeller frequently noted the types of goods he
plished wood sculptors. exchanged for specific objects and the names of the artists
At the time of Rockefeller’s visit to the Asmat region, who had made them, as in this entry from June 29, 1961, from
the Dutch, who briefly opened an administrative post in the the village of Omadesep:
area in 1938 (it closed three years later following the outbreak
of World War II in the Pacific), had only just begun to rees- (27) Prow ornament by Terepos . . . (1 ½ Lempang
tablish control of the area, reopening the post in 1953. In that [an Indonesian unit of trade] tobacco)
same year the first Catholic missionaries arrived and founded (28) Tortoise—(4 arm lengths of nylon line and one
a mission station. 28 Venturing there only eight years later, large fish hook) by Pechur
Rockefeller encountered the Asmat at a time when many of
their art traditions either were ongoing or had only recently During his initial visit Rockefeller was based in the vil-
ceased, and many master carvers were still active. Indeed, lage of Amanamkai, where he and Putnam stayed with Dutch
Western influences on Asmat culture were so limited that the anthropologist Adrian Gerbrands, of the Rijksmuseum voor
Asmat had not yet adopted the use of money; virtually all Volkenkunde, Leiden, who was conducting research with the

29
resident master carvers. From there the two traveled by canoe,
together with Gerbrands and Dutch government anthropolo-
gist René Wassing, to collect works in the surrounding vil-
lages, bringing with them the necessary supplies of trade
goods (fig. 36). 29 Having been cautioned before his departure
by MPA director Robert Goldwater that a “long line of collec-
tors” had already passed through the area and that there might
be little left to acquire—an opinion likely based on informa-
tion from American medical researcher Carleton Gajdusek,
who had briefly visited the Asmat region—Rockefeller dis-
covered otherwise. His determination not only to collect but
also to document the works he acquired was almost certainly
strengthened by his interaction with Gerbrands, whose
groundbreaking research on individual styles of Asmat master
carvers sought to dispel the prevailing Western misconception
that Oceanic artists were anonymous craftspeople reproduc-
ing a predetermined series of collective art forms. In a letter to
Goldwater dated July 9, 1961, Rockefeller described his
36. Adrian Gerbrands and Michael C. Rockefeller with tobacco in an Asmat
longhouse, 1961
30
approach: “I shall continue my policy of finding the names
of the artists of all the objects which I collect, photographing
the objects and artists where they are important, and making
as complete as possible a documentation of the various art-
producing villages I visit.” 30 The rigorousness of Rockefeller’s
documentation is evident in the detailed information and
photographic record he made of a jifoi, a canoe-shaped
wood bowl used for mixing red paint (fig. 37), which he
purchased directly from the artist Ndanim of Omadesep
village:
(19) Paint dish in the form of Prow [canoe] with large
human figure at one end by Ndanim. His portrait taken
on exposures 29–31 of Roll #1012. From Village of
Omadesep. A group of about 8 men came from the
village [of Omadesep to Amanamkai]. . . . They
brought with them about 12 objects, for they knew of
Dr. Gerbrands “who bought art.”
Although the journal entry notes that the Asmat regarded
Gerbrands as the one “who bought art,” it was Rockefeller
who eventually acquired Ndanim’s remarkable bowl and also
made several striking photographic portraits of the artist with
his work (fig. 38).
Rockefeller spent only three weeks in the Asmat region
on his first trip, but the expedition nonetheless proved phe-
nomenally fruitful. His most remarkable acquisitions were
the towering bis poles that today are among the most promi-
nent works in the Metropolitan’s Oceanic galleries (fig. 39).
These monumental wood carvings are created for one time
use, predominantly for the bis feast, from which the poles
derive their name—commemorating individuals who have
recently died and assisting their spirits onward to safan, the
land of the ancestors—but they are made occasionally for
other rites as well. In his letter to Goldwater, Rockefeller
enthusiastically described his success in obtaining two sepa-
rate groups of bis poles, which he considered his most signifi-
cant purchases from the first trip:
I think that the bise [sic] poles alone made this trip
thoroughly worthwhile. The first is a set of 4 from . . .
Omadesep. . . . They were carved not for a Bise cere-
mony, but for a men’s house inauguration ceremony. . . .
We asked this particular men’s house to reenact the
ceremony for us, and thus I have good photographic
documentation of the circumstances in which they
 were used. Furthermore, I have photographed each of
the artists with the pole that he carved and found out as
much as I could about the ancestor represented by the
several figures on each pole. . . . Dr. Gerbrands felt that
these poles were up to the standards of any in Europe.
He said that as yet no museum had collected a complete
set of poles used in one ceremony. . . . Secondly, I am in
the process of getting 3 bise poles from [Otsjanep village]
of an entirely different style. These ones have resulted
from the well known bise ceremony. . . . 7 poles, I know,
is quite a few bise poles, However, I never once hesitated
in getting them, for I feel that my opportunity is unique.
. . . Indeed, if there are more opportunities to get other
bise poles of different styles . . . I should be inclined to
take advantage of them also.

After Rockefeller and Putnam left the Asmat region,

they rejoined the Harvard expedition and remained with it

37. Bowl (Jifoi). Carved by Ndanim, Asmat people, Omadesep village, Faretsj
River region, New Guinea, Papua Province, Indonesia, mid-20th century.
Wood with traces of paint; L. 34 ¼ in. (87 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller
Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller and Mrs. Mary C. 38. Michael C. Rockefeller’s photograph of the artist Ndanim with his jifoi
Rockefeller, 1965 (1978.412.1199) (fig. 37), 1961

31
39. Asmat bis poles on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
until early September, when it ended. Following a brief trip
home to New York, Rockefeller returned to the Asmat region
in late September for a more extensive collecting trip for the
Museum of Primitive Art. Accompanied by Wassing, he spent
two months traveling to villages along the Casuarina coast
and up many of the rivers that drain into it, all the while col-
lecting and documenting works in numerous villages. 31
Curious about the full range of Asmat art, he purchased
works of every type and scale, from personal ornaments to a
massive dugout canoe that he commissioned from the master
carver Chinasaptich, today the largest single work in the
Metropolitan’s Oceanic collection.
In their travels, Rockefeller and Wassing often relied on
a catamaran-like craft made from two canoes attached to a
broad wood platform. On November 18, 1961, while attempt-
ing to cross the rough waters and heavy currents at the mouth
of the Betsj River, their vessel overturned and was rapidly
swept out to sea. After drifting for nearly a day, and with no
sign of any rescue attempt, Rockefeller, now roughly twelve
miles from shore, tied two gas cans together for flotation,
decided to swim for help, and lost his life.
Today the remarkable collection of nearly six hundred
Asmat works assembled by Rockefeller on his two trips to the
32
region still forms the largest and best-documented corpus of
art from any single Oceanic tradition in the Metropolitan’s
collection and includes many outstanding examples of Asmat
sculpture. But because many of the works had recently been
created when Rockefeller acquired them, misconceptions
sometimes arise regarding the collection’s aesthetic quality,
often reflecting a lack of understanding of the nature of
Asmat art. With the exception of utilitarian objects such as
weapons and food bowls, virtually all Asmat wood carving
was ephemeral in nature. After being used in the ceremony
for which they were designed, such sculptures were either
discarded or destroyed. Indeed, virtually all works of Asmat
sculpture—even those in the vast colonial-era collections
of Dutch museums—were newly made when they were
obtained. Rockefeller’s exemplary collection of Asmat sculp-
ture remains a cornerstone of the Metropolitan Museum’s
Oceanic galleries, and the wing named after him endures as a
fitting tribute to his accomplishments in collecting and docu-
menting one of New Guinea’s foremost art traditions.
While Michael Rockefeller focused on the Asmat, the
Museum of Primitive Art’s other great field collector, Douglas
Newton (fig. 40), cast a broader net in a very different region
of New Guinea. Newton was born in 1920 to English parents
 the Metropolitan Museum. As chairman, Newton oversaw the
transfer of the Museum of Primitive Art’s collections to the
Metropolitan and the incorporation of its library, archives,
photographic collections, and much of its staff into what is
now the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the
Americas, which he chaired until his retirement, in 1990. 33
In his years at the Museum of Primitive Art, Newton
organized more than sixty exhibitions and, with Goldwater
and d’Harnoncourt, was instrumental in the acquisition of
many of its outstanding Oceanic masterworks. These include

40. Douglas Newton, 1961

on a rubber plantation in what is today Malaysia. Returning

to England as a youth, he received some formal schooling but
was largely self-educated and never earned a university degree.
An insatiable reader and a keen observer with wide-ranging
interests, Newton discussed his early passions and eclectic
tastes in the arts, including those of Africa and Oceania, in an
interview conducted the year before his death, in 2001:

After a number of phases that involved a passion for

ancient Egyptian art and, later . . . Aubrey Beardsley,
I discovered contemporary English art around the age
of sixteen. . . . I found that [English sculptor Sir] Jacob
Epstein . . . had an interest in African sculpture, so I was
impelled to find out why. For years before World War II
began, I haunted the British Museum. . . . When the
ethnography galleries began to reopen after the war,
I went to them constantly with the sculptors Eduardo
Paolozzi and William Turnbull. I read a great deal in the
British Museum Library and began to visit regularly
dealers . . . and became familiar with anthropologists . . .
and began to learn about the arts. 32

Following jobs in England as an editor, journalist, and

BBC scriptwriter, Newton moved to New York in 1956, in
part because a friend had told him that Nelson Rockefeller
was in the process of forming what would become the
Museum of Primitive Art and had encouraged him to apply
for a job. Newton managed to obtain a meeting with René
d’Harnoncourt, the museum’s cofounder, and in 1957 was
hired as an assistant curator. Promoted to full curator in 1960, 41. Shield (Grere’o [?]). Solomon Islands, probably New Georgia or
he became director of the museum in 1974, following the Guadalcanal Island (shield), possibly Santa Isabel Island (inlay), early to
mid-19th century. Fiber, parinarium-nut paste, chambered-nautilus shell,
death of Robert Goldwater, and was eventually made consul- and pigment; H. 33 ¼ in. (84.5 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial
tative chairman of the nascent Department of Primitive Art at Collection, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1972 (1978.412.730)

33
42. Skull hook (Agiba). Kerewa people, Pai’ia’a village, western Papuan Gulf, Papua New Guinea, 19th–early 20th century. Wood and paint; 55 ⅞ x 29 ½ x 5 in.
(141.9 x 74.9 x 12.7 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1969 (1978.412.796)

a spectacular shell-inlaid shield from the Solomon Islands expressive energy of its carving, is almost universally regarded
(fig. 41), one of only about two dozen known examples, as as the finest of its type (fig. 42).
well as an imposing skull hook from the Papuan Gulf in In the mid-1960s, after a number of years acquiring art
New Guinea, which, with its impressive scale and the raw, exclusively on the Western market, Newton began traveling

34
periodically to New Guinea to purchase works for the muse-
um’s Oceanic collection. Between 1964 and 1973 he made five
trips to the Sepik River region, in northeast New Guinea,
where he obtained works in their source communities and
from missionaries, colonial officials, and other Western expa-
triates. Unlike the Asmat region, the Sepik River territory had
been a destination for museum expeditions, missionaries, and
others for most of the twentieth century. By the early 1960s
much of its early art had been collected, and large quantities
of wood carvings were being produced expressly for sale.
Nonetheless, for those with a discerning eye, many important
objects remained.
Unlike Rockefeller, Newton appears to have kept few
written records of his trips, although when he obtained
objects directly in local villages he was careful to document
their origins and, occasionally, the artists’ names. Among
Newton’s most significant acquisitions were four early wood
sculptures from the Inyai-Ewa people of the upper Korewori
River, including an outstanding male figure representing a
primordial ancestor (fig. 43). This sculptural tradition, whose
earliest works may date to the sixteenth century, had only
recently been discovered by Westerners when, in 1964,
Newton purchased the group from one Father Heinemans of
the Catholic mission in the town of Wewak. Newton’s fore-
sight in acquiring these essentially unknown works was amply
borne out with time, as Inyai-Ewa sculpture today is consid-
ered among the best produced by any Sepik peoples.
Newton sought out not only rare forms of sculpture
but also exceptional examples of common objects. His con-
noisseurship is evident in the unsurpassed quality of a yam
mask from the Abelam people, which he also purchased from
Heinemans (fig. 44). Thousands of such masks, used by vir-
tually all Abelam men to decorate large yams for ceremonial
exchanges, exist in museums and private collections around
the world, but the exquisitely rendered features of this one,
particularly the ideal visual balance between the concentric
bands constituting the eyes and headdress, elevate it far above
other examples of the genre.
In collecting objects directly from Sepik peoples,
Newton concentrated largely on the populations of the
Upper Sepik region, such as the Iwam, Wogumas, Kwoma,
and Nukuma, who at the time were visited infrequently
compared with groups farther downriver. Perhaps Newton’s
most spectacular acquisition, obtained in 1970 and 1973, after 43. Male figure. Inyai-Ewa people, Korewori River, Middle Sepik region, Papua
New Guinea, 16th–19th century. Wood; 47 ½ x 5 x 7 in. (120.7 x 12.7 x 17.8 cm).
the Museum of Primitive Art’s collection had been promised The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Purchase, Nelson A.
to the Metropolitan, was a group of more than 270 paintings Rockefeller Gift, 1965 (1978.412.856)

35
44. Yam mask. Abelam people, Prince Alexander Mountains, Sepik region, Papua New Guinea, early to mid-20th century. Fiber and paint; H. 25 in. (63.5 cm).
The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Purchase, Nelson A. Rockefeller Gift, 1965 (1978.412.858)

36
45. Paintings from a ceremonial-house ceiling. Artists of Mariwai village, Kwoma people, Washkuk Hills. Upper Sepik River, Papua New Guinea, 1970 and 1973. Sago
palm spathe and paint. The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Purchase, Mrs. Gertrud A. Mellon Gift, and Mr. and Mrs. Alan Brandt Gift, in memory
of Jacob J. Brandt, 1974 (1978.412.1621)

that he commissioned from Kwoma artists in the village of
Mariwai with the intention of re-creating the spectacular
polychrome ceiling of a Kwoma ceremonial house in New
York. A selection of more than one hundred paintings
from the group was used to construct a reduced version of
such a ceiling in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing when it
opened to the public in 1982. Not until the reinstallation
of the Metropolitan’s Oceanic galleries in 2007, however, was
Newton’s original vision realized and the entire ceiling pre-
sented for the first time, installed on a specially constructed
armature whose design was inspired by actual ceilings from
Kwoma ceremonial houses (fig. 45).
The determination of Michael Rockefeller and Douglas
Newton to seize the unique but fleeting opportunity in the
early 1960s to acquire important works of art in New Guinea
profoundly broadened the Oceanic collection at the Museum
of Primitive Art and, by succession, the Metropolitan, provid-
ing a richness that is abundantly reflected in the Oceanic gal-
leries today. Although it now seems inconceivable to imagine
the Metropolitan without the Asmat bis poles, canoe, and
Kwoma ceiling, or its superb display of Korewori River and
Upper Sepik sculpture, none of these transformative works of
art would be here without the vision and resolve of these two
remarkable figures.

37
The Museum of Primitive Art in
Africa at the Time of Independence
Yaëlle Biro

For the inaugural exhibition of the Museum of Primitive

Art (MPA), in early 1957, the museum’s director, Robert
Goldwater, struck a decidedly humanist tone, emphasizing,
“We are aware of our kinship with all mankind.” 34 This
approach to the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas
informed not only the seventy or so subsequent exhibitions
organized by the MPA and its nearly sixty publications, but
also the institution’s active loan policy. With limited space in
its own galleries and a constantly growing collection, the
MPA proved a particularly generous lender to both domestic
and international institutions. Moreover, the museum’s strong
educational mission led it to initiate touring exhibitions that
traveled to university museums across the United States.
Whereas the museum’s physical space was pocket-size, the
influence of its exhibition program on the appreciation of
non-Western arts and their museography was tremendous.
On two occasions during the 1960s the Museum of
Primitive Art loaned select works from its collections—such
as a Bamana female figure (fig. 46)—to groundbreaking exhi-
bitions in Africa. The first was at the Rhodes National Gallery,
in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), in 1962, and
the second at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar,
Senegal, in 1966. Although the exhibitions took place in dras-
tically different political and cultural contexts, both were
intended to support Africa’s pride in its artistic patrimony
and cultural history. The involvement of the MPA embodied
the vision of its founder, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller,
who saw art as a valuable tool of diplomacy and sought to link
cultural exchange with international politics. It also under-
scored the institution’s desire to celebrate the moment of
transition in Africa from colonialism to independence. This
desire expressed itself in different ways. In September 1960
Governor Rockefeller led the U.S. delegation to Nigeria’s
independence ceremony as President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s
representative. Rockefeller allied his political responsibilities

46. Female figure (Nyeleni). Bamana peoples, Mali, 19th–20th century.

Wood and metal; 22 ¾ x 6 ¼ x 5 ⅝ in. (57.8 x 15.9 x 14.4 cm). The Michael C.
Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1969
(1978.412.347)

38
with his interests in African art, meeting Nigeria’s new offi-
cials (fig. 47) while also visiting local markets and touring the
National Museum in Lagos with the director of the Nigerian
Department of Antiquities, British archaeologist and curator
Bernard Fagg (fig. 48). The visit no doubt led to the 1961 MPA
exhibition “The Traditional Arts of Africa’s New Nations,”
which featured one hundred works from sixteen newly inde-
pendent African countries.
The events in Salisbury and Dakar followed a similar for-
mat. Inaugurated by a colloquium of African, European, and
American speakers, they included art exhibitions, concerts,
and dance and theater performances. Firmly international in
scope, they were designed to showcase the wide-ranging con-
tributions of African culture to the world. Although the 1962
gathering in Salisbury prefigured the 1966 Dakar festival, the
latter has received extensive scholarly attention while the
events in then-Rhodesia have remained comparatively under-
studied, possibly owing to their political and social context.
Formally known as the International Congress of
African Culture (ICAC), the Rhodesian event (fig. 49) was
organized by Frank McEwen, who had been director of the
Rhodes National Gallery since 1956, the year before it
opened. That the ICAC took place in a country still under
firm colonial rule and in a museum directed by a British offi-
cial has often made it difficult to separate the endeavor from
its colonial context. But the content of the exhibition, the ros-
ter of international guests invited to the eleven-day collo-
quium, and the correspondence now available in the MPA
archives allow us to redefine this event as more subversive,
almost anticolonial in tone.
McEwen, an artist by training who had spent most of
his career in France and had worked at the British Arts
Council in Paris, had grown disenchanted during the 1950s
with the European art scene and, especially, with the School
of Paris, with which he was closely associated. In African
art, McEwen found a source of artistic renewal, and when
the opportunity arose to become director of the Rhodes
National Gallery, he jumped at the chance. McEwen firmly
believed that the gallery would be successful only if it capital-
ized on its African location and if its programming took
ample advantage of this connection. Accordingly, shortly
47. Nelson A. Rockefeller shaking hands with Abubakar Tafawa Balewa,
after his arrival he initiated and promoted the Rhodesian prime minister of Nigeria, September 1960
Workshop School, a manufactory for soapstone sculpture,
48. Nelson A. Rockefeller with Bernard Fagg, director of the National
a local idiom. 35 In publications and exhibitions he persis- Museum, Lagos, Nigeria, September 1960
tently emphasized Zimbabwe’s ancient and important cul-
49. Delegates to the International Congress of African Culture (ICAC),
tural history. McEwen showcased European paintings in Salisbury, Rhodesia, 1962

39
the gallery’s inaugural exhibition, in 1957—which was
attended by Queen Elizabeth—including loans from presti-
gious European institutions such as the Musée du Louvre,
Paris, the National Gallery, London, and the Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, thus satisfying the museum’s board of directors,
whose intent was to focus primarily on Old Masters and
European art. Keeping true to his ideals, McEwen also exhib-
ited historical African sculpture as well as a small selection of
works demonstrating the influence of Africa on twentieth-
century Western schools. 36
Although McEwen had developed the idea of hosting a
festival devoted to African arts and their impact on Western
culture shortly after he settled in Rhodesia, the country’s con-
stantly shifting political terrain postponed it for several years.
Through McEwen’s perseverance, the eleven-day congress
finally launched on August 1, 1962, while the associated exhi-
bitions lasted through the end of September. The congress, by
all accounts a success, was attended by thirty-eight delegates
from three continents. Among them were a number of high-
profile museum professionals, collectors, and university pro-
fessors, such as Saburi Biobaku and the artist Vincent Kofi
from Nigeria and Ghana, respectively; Alfred H. Barr, Jr.,
James Porter, and William Bascom from the United States;
and Tristan Tzara, William Fagg (Bernard’s brother), Roland
Penrose, and the collector Pierre Guerre from Europe. 37
The congress’s extensive exhibition component aimed
to demonstrate the broad accomplishments of African artists
past and present. While the preliminary program announced
six distinct exhibitions, it is unclear whether they all actually
took place (only three are confirmed in the exhibition cata-
logue). 38 “Ancient African Art” incorporated loans from an
impressive roster of African, European, and American lend-
ers; “African Influence upon Western Schools” featured sev-
eral works borrowed from Penrose, a Picasso specialist; and
“Non-Traditional African Art” focused on artists from
McEwen’s Rhodesian Workshop School, such as Kingsley
Sambo and Thomas Mukorombogwo. The congress also
showcased works by Kofi, Mozambique’s Alberto Mati, and
Nigeria’s Ben Enwonwu. As Sunday Times (London) critic
John Russell testified at the end of the congress, “[It] was
many things in one, an exhibition of African art which was by
far the finest ever assembled in Africa; a small scale African

50. Mask: Female figure (Karan-wemba). Mossi peoples, Burkina Faso,

19th–20th century. Wood and metal; 29 ½ x 6 x 5 ¼ in. (74.9 x 15.2 x 13.3 cm).
The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A.
Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.84)

40

Salzburg with an orchestra from Mozambique; a theatre group
from the Côte d’Ivoire, instrumental soloists from many parts
of Africa, and a steel band from Trinidad—a university open
to all in which every hour, on the hour, authorities from all
over the world could be heard on their African subjects.” 39
Through the congress McEwen had hoped to “inspire
more understanding,” but in Rhodesia at that time exhibiting
African and Western artists together as equals and highlight-
ing the influence of Africa on Western culture were perceived
as subversive. Correspondence in the MPA archives sheds
light on McEwen’s struggles to organize the event and on
Robert Goldwater’s own skepticism regarding its potential to
succeed. McEwen had first approached Goldwater about the
project in 1959, hoping not only to borrow works from the
MPA but also to persuade him to participate. 40 Following two
postponements, McEwen contacted Goldwater again in 1962
with a new official opening date and a candid assessment:
We are now in a position to say that our projected
Congress is on for certain on 1st August. It is gathering
momentum and good support from the countries we
have contact with. . . . Rhodesia, as I have constantly
maintained, may be considered by people “outside” as
51. Figure: Buffalo head. Ewe peoples, Togo,
19th–20th century. Terracotta; 9 x 9 ⅛ x
4 ⅝ in. (22.9 x 23.2 x 11.7 cm). The Michael C.
Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest
of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.1)
an unsympathetic place to hold such a Congress. In
point of fact it is more necessary here than anywhere else
and it is something of a miracle that we can hold it at all.
For this reason it needs support and is likely to be a tri-
umph for African consciousness and confidence . . . 41
Beginning to doubt the project’s feasibility because of the
repeated false starts, Goldwater wrote to his colleagues
William Fagg at the British Museum and Michel Leiris at the
Musée de l’Homme, Paris, for reassurance. Fagg’s response, in
particular, is revealing:
In the past, though Government approval had appar-
ently been given in principle, there was no outward sign
of effective government support, and this did not alto-
gether surprise me, since, from the somewhat diffuse
character projected for it, the congress seemed not
unlikely to develop into an anti-colonialist rally. . . . On
the whole, I am reasonably optimistic of the Congress
being held this time. 42
In the end Goldwater agreed to lend a group of ten works
(e.g., figs. 46, 50, 51), which were chosen by MPA curator
41
52. Headdress: Serpent (A-Mantsho-ña-Tshol). Baga peoples, Guinea, 19th–20th century. Wood and pigment; H. 54 ½ in. (138.4 cm). The Michael C.
Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1964 (1978.412.339)

42
Douglas Newton in collaboration with Hosea Mapondera, a
public-relations officer at the Rhodes National Gallery. 43 The
selection, which included several of Rockefeller’s noteworthy
recent acquisitions, shows an emphasis on works from coun-
tries in West and Central Africa: Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo,
Burkina Faso, Mali, Gabon, and the Democratic Republic of
the Congo. Among the most striking was an over-lifesize
Baga serpent headdress from Guinea (fig. 52), whose sinuous
curves and elegant representation evoke the power, elusive
grace, and flexibility of a Baga spiritual entity known as
A-Mantsho-ña-Tshol. Several examples of this genre of sculp-
ture, which had been unknown in the West less than a decade
before, were collected in Guinea during the second half of
the 1950s and brought to the attention of the art market. With
its strikingly colored patterned surface and towering height,
the headdress undoubtedly made a powerful visual impact
in McEwen’s exhibition (fig. 53), as did a Kwele elephant
mask from Gabon whose heart-shaped face, projecting trunk,
and sculptural planes are defined by black, white, and ocher
pigments (fig. 54).
In contrast to the Salisbury congress, which struggled
to find official support in its home country, the festival in
Dakar was a cultural and political statement initiated and fully

54. Beete mask: Elephant (Zok). Kwele peoples, Gabon, 19th–20th century.
Wood, pigment, and kaolin; 30 x 5 ⅞ x 10 ⅝ in. (76.2 x 14.9 x 27 cm). The
Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller,
53. ICAC exhibition, Rhodes National Gallery, 1962 1964 (1978.412.292)

43
endorsed by Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor
(fig. 55). As the head of state of a newly independent African
nation, Senghor was determined to root his policies in the
specifics of black identity and to use that connection as a point
of departure for forging an African modernity. 44 Echoing
55. President Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal on the cover of Bingo:
Le mensuel du monde noir, April 1966
56. “L ’Art nègre: sources, évolution, expansion” at the Musée Dynamique de
Dakar, on view during the First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar, Senegal,
1966
44
Senghor’s political ambitions and rhetoric, the festival was to
be “a solemn and unprecedented assertion of [the] values of
Négritude,” the pan-African ideological movement Senghor
had developed in his capacity as both a literary figure and
a public intellectual. The festival’s highlight, the exhibition
“L ’Art nègre: sources, évolution, expansion,” was focused
equally on classical African arts and contemporary arts from
Africa and the diaspora; there was also a symposium as well
as theater, music, and dance performances. 45
Like the 1962 Rhodesian congress, the 1966 Dakar
exhibition—organized under the auspices of UNESCO and
the French government, and opened on April 1 by Senghor
and André Malraux, the French minister of culture—
included works lent by museums and royal collections from
across the African continent as well as by European and
American private and institutional holdings. 46 It was held in
the Musée Dynamique, a state-of-the-art, custom-built facil-
ity (fig. 56). Goldwater, who was on the advisory committee
overseeing the American contributions, was also asked to
chair the exhibition committee, arrange all the U.S. loans, and
participate in the symposium. 47 The U.S. committee eventu-
ally sent forty-two of the five hundred works on view in
Dakar, twenty-three of them from the MPA (figs. 46, 57, 58).
Although rumors circulated among the Americans of the risk
of possible repatriation claims by African countries—a con-
cern Goldwater raised in a letter to President Senghor—the
Senegalese ambassador to France, Médoune Fall, assured him
that Senghor would tolerate no such claims, clearing the way
for the loans. 48
Documents in the MPA archives reveal that the Dakar
festival’s message of cultural recognition extended far beyond
the African continent and, in fact, resonated powerfully in the
United States, which was in the midst of its own civil rights
struggle. The American committee’s handbook to the festival
opened with a statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson
reaffirming the festival’s goal of demonstrating the contribu-
tions of the “Negro . . . to the enrichment of world culture.”
“Nowhere outside of Africa itself,” the statement continues,
“have the values and the influence of Negro arts achieved
greater vitality than here in the United States. These values, so
familiar to Americans, have yet to be fully appreciated beyond
our borders. The Festival should do much to win for the
genius of Negro artists the recognition it desires.” 49 Written
only two years after Johnson signed the watershed Civil
Rights Act, and at a time of civil unrest and race riots in the
United States, his words echoed the historic significance of
57. Dorothy Lytle, registrar of the Museum of Primitive Art, preparing a
Kifwebe mask and Bamana figure (fig. 58) for the First World Festival of
Negro Arts, 1966

the moment. To reiterate Johnson’s personal investment in

the festival, the First Lady was made honorary chairman of
the U.S. committee; in addition, the United States contrib-
uted $150,000 to the festival through the State Department
and planned to send a delegation of about one hundred
African American visual artists, writers, musicians, and dance
performers, including Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes.
The U.S. committee also determined that the American pre-
sentations would later be shown in the United States, “thus
displaying for the first time as a cultural entity the vivid and
powerful contribution of the Negro to our life and times.” 50
Central among the wide range of works loaned by the
MPA to the Dakar exhibition—masks and figures from Guinea,
Sierra Leone, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria,
Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—was
a female element of a reliquary created by a Fang master from
present-day Equatorial Guinea (fig. 59). 51 Originally placed
at the summit of a portable family altar, the figure was the
public face of the ancestral presence contained within. Oils
ritually applied to the figure’s surface over many years give it
a distinctive, lustrous shine and sticky texture. A muse of the
French artist André Derain, who had owned it during the
first decades of the twentieth century, this impressive female
representation was acquired in 1960 from the estate of sculp-
tor Sir Jacob Epstein and instantly became a cornerstone of 58. Seated female figure. Bamana peoples, Mali, 15th–19th century. Wood;
40 ¼ x 8  ½ x 10 ⅞ in. (102.2 x 21.6 x 27.6 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller
the MPA collection. That it was lent to the festival in Dakar is Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1965 (1978.412.338)

45
 all the more remarkable given the work’s status as an icon
of African art and concerns for the effects of shipping on its
delicate surface.
Archival sources indicate that the Museum of Primitive
Art also lent twenty works to yet another major exhibition
in Africa, the 1969 First Pan-African Cultural Festival in
Algiers. 52 Although a selection was made and works were
sent to Algeria, logistical mishaps and miscommunication
prevented them from being exhibited. This aborted participa-
tion nonetheless confirms the MPA’s dedication to lending to
exhibitions in Africa as late as 1969, when the transfer of its
collection to the Metropolitan Museum was already formal-
ized. Today, when loans of major works of art from Western
collections to the African continent are scarce at best, the
broad scope of these exhibitions and the number of impor-
tant pieces secured from prominent international lenders
seem astonishingly impressive. Yet it bears remembering that
the spirit of hope inherent in the independence movements
then sweeping across Africa was shared by a wide constitu-
ency within the art establishment. The participation of the
Museum of Primitive Art in these African celebrations was
the direct result of the historical circumstances of the 1960s
aligning both with the MPA’s mission and with Rockefeller’s
political ideals concerning the role of art in furthering inter-
national dialogue. Looking back, we can see how the context
and reception of these exhibitions, which pioneered how art-
ists from Africa and the African diaspora are presented to a
diverse audience, should inspire cultural institutions in the
West seeking to reach an increasingly global audience as well
as museums across Africa discovering new ways to interact
with their audiences at home.

59. Figure from a reliquary ensemble: Seated female. Fang peoples, Okak group,
Equatorial Guinea, 19th–early 20th century. Wood and metal; 25 ¼ x 7 ⅞ x
6 ½ in. (64 x 20 x 16.5 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection,
Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1965 (1978.412.441)

46
CHRONOLOGY

1930 1957
Nelson Rockefeller visits Hawaii on an around-the-world honeymoon trip and acquires The MPA opens to the public in February with the exhibition “Selected Works One,”
his first work of “primitive” art, a Hawaiian bowl. which features an array of art from diverse regions of the world. Douglas Newton joins the
staff of the MPA as assistant curator.
1932
Rockefeller becomes a trustee of both The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum 1958
of Modern Art (MoMA). Rockefeller acquires an ivory pendant mask from Benin (fig. 7), paying a record price for a
work of “primitive” art. “Selected Works Four,” an exhibition of ancient Peruvian textiles
1933 and featherwork, opens at the MPA.
He visits Mexico for the first time.
1960
1935 Rockefeller leads the U.S. delegation to Nigeria and attends ceremonies commemorating
The exhibition “African Negro Art” at MoMA has a profound influence on several of the the country’s independence from the United Kingdom. His son Michael becomes a
future leaders of the Museum of Primitive Art, including Rockefeller and Robert Goldwater. trustee of the MPA. “The Art of Lake Sentani” opens at the MPA. Rockefeller is elected
fourteenth governor of the state of New York.
1937
During travels in South America, Rockefeller has his first encounter with Peruvian antiqui- 1961
ties, which he particularly admires. “Art Styles of the Papuan Gulf ” opens at the MPA. Michael Rockefeller joins the Harvard-
Peabody New Guinea Expedition to the Baliem Valley, in western New Guinea, and makes
1939 his first collecting trip to the Asmat region. He is lost while on a second collecting trip to
Rockefeller acquires a group of Peruvian ceramic bowls in Buenos Aires. the Asmat later in the year.

1940 1962
“Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art” opens at MoMA in cooperation with the Mexican The MPA exhibition “The Art of the Asmat, New Guinea: Collected by Michael C.
government. Rockefeller becomes president of MoMA’s board of trustees. About this time Rockefeller,” designed by d’Harnoncourt with Douglas Newton’s assistance, opens in
he meets René d’Harnoncourt in New York. a specially built pavilion inside MoMA’s courtyard (see fig. 12).

1941 1963
“Indian Art of the United States” opens at MoMA. The exhibition is organized by Under Goldwater’s direction, the MPA presents “Senufo Sculpture from West Africa.”
d’Harnoncourt, then general manager of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, and Frederic H. Mary Rockefeller Morgan, Nelson’s daughter, is elected to the MPA board of trustees.
Douglas, a pioneering curator in the field.
1964
1941 – 45 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits racial, ethnic,
As coordinator of the Office of Inter-American Affairs, Rockefeller travels widely in Latin national, religious, and gender discrimination.
America.
1965
1942 The MPA loan exhibition “The Jaguar’s Children: Pre-Classic Central Mexico” focuses on
Rockefeller proposes to MoMA’s trustees the formation of a collection of folk and indig- the complex history of the early peoples of that region in the mid-first millennium b.c.
enous art of the New World that would encompass painting, sculpture, ceramics, textiles,
and other works of applied arts. 1966
The First World Festival of Negro Arts (1er Festival mondial des arts nègres) is held in
1944 Dakar, Senegal.
MoMA hires d’Harnoncourt as vice president in charge of foreign affairs and director of
the Department of Manual Industries. 1967
The MPA publishes The Asmat of New Guinea: The Journal of Michael Clark Rockefeller,
1946 which contains Michael’s notes and photographs as well as a catalogue of the Asmat works
“Arts of the South Seas,” organized by d’Harnoncourt in collaboration with the anthro- he collected.
pologist Ralph Linton and noted scholar Paul Wingert, opens at MoMA.
1969
1949 “Art of Oceania, Africa, and the Americas from the Museum of Primitive Art” opens at
D’Harnoncourt becomes director of MoMA. the Metropolitan and introduces the Museum’s audience to the Rockefeller collections.
Rockefeller signs an agreement to transfer the MPA’s collection, staff, and library to the Met.
1949
Rockefeller acquires his first works of African, American Indian, Oceanic, and 1974
Precolumbian art from dealers in New York and Los Angeles. Newton succeeds Goldwater as director of the MPA and is later appointed chairman of
the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Primitive Art. Construction begins on the
1953 Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, designed by architects at Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and
“Primitive Sculpture from the Collection of Nelson A. Rockefeller,” the first exhibition Associates. Mary Rockefeller Morgan is elected to the Metropolitan Museum’s board
drawn from the Rockefeller collection, opens at the Century Association, New York. of trustees. In December, the MPA closes its doors.

1954 1978 – 79
“Ancient Arts of the Andes” opens at MoMA. A major international loan exhibition orga- The collection and library of the MPA are physically transferred to The Metropolitan
nized by d’Harnoncourt and the archaeologist Wendell Bennett, the show includes works Museum of Art.
from the Rockefeller collection. The Museum of Indigenous Art is chartered as an educa-
tional corporation, “the first of its kind in the world,” according to the charter. Rockefeller 1982
and d’Harnoncourt are its principal officers. Opening of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing.

1956 1991
In September, Goldwater is appointed director of the new museum, which three months The Metropolitan’s board of trustees votes to rename the Department of Primitive Art the
later is formally renamed the Museum of Primitive Art (MPA). Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

47
NOTES
1. “Art Interview by Paul Cummings of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, for the Archives
of American Art,” July 24, 1972, Nelson A. Rockefeller Papers, Rockefeller Family
Archives, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York, record group 26,
series 12, box 10, folder 142.
2. Memos regarding the formation of the collection may be found in the Archive of the
Museum of Primitive Art, Robert Goldwater Library, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York.
3. Robert Goldwater, The Great Bieri, Studies, 1 (New York: Museum of Primitive Art,
1962).
4. Hilton Kramer, “In Honor of Robert Goldwater,” New York Times, October 14, 1973,
p. D25.
5. Primitive Art: African, Oceanic, American Indian, Pacific Northwest Coast and Pre-
Columbian Art, Duplicates from the Collection of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and the
Museum of Primitive Art, New York, Public Auction, May 14, sale cat. (New York: Parke-
Bernet Galleries, 1967).
6. Sanka Knox, “New Art Museum Shows Primitives: Nelson Rockefeller Display
Opens to the Public Today at 15 West 54th Street,” New York Times, February 21, 1957,
p. 23; Cary Reich, The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer, 1908–1958
(New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 166; Nelson Rockefeller, “Introduction,” in
Masterpieces of Primitive Art, by Douglas Newton et al., The Nelson A. Rockefeller
Collection (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), pp. 19–25.
7. Anna Indych-López, “Mexican Muralism in the United States: The Controversies
and Paradoxes of Patronage and Reception,” in Mexican Muralism: A Critical History,
ed. Alejandro Anreus, Leonard Folgarait, and Robin Adèle Greeley (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2012), pp. 208–26; see especially pp. 210–11.
8. Nelson A. Rockefeller to Julio C. Tello, May 21, 1937. Division of Anthropology
Archives, American Museum of Natural History, New York (hereafter DAA, AMNH).
9. Reich, Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller, p. 167; Rockefeller, “Introduction,” in Masterpieces
of Primitive Art, p. 21.
10. H. E. Winlock, director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, to Clark Wissler of the
American Museum of Natural History, June 21, 1937. DAA, AMNH. Nelson A.
Rockefeller to Wendell C. Bennett of the American Museum of Natural History,
August 3, 1937. DAA, AMNH.
11. Nelson A. Rockefeller, “Collecting Peruvian Art: The Charm of Pre-Columbian
Crafts,” Arts Magazine 43, no. 2 (November 1968), pp. 42–44.
12. Rockefeller, “Introduction,” in Masterpieces of Primitive Art, pp. 19–25.
13. Anna Indych-López, Muralism without Walls: Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros in the United
States, 1927–1940 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), pp. 158–63.
14. Gisela Cramer and Ursula Prutsch, eds., ¡Américas unidas!: Nelson A. Rockefeller’s Office
of Inter-American Affairs (1940–46) (Madrid and Orlando: Iberoamericana Vervuert,
2012); Reich, Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller, pp. 214–15; Nelson A. Rockefeller, “The
Spirit of Hemisphere Cooperation: Cultural Understanding as a Basis for Lasting
Peace,” The Saturday Review of Literature 26, no. 15 (April 10, 1943), pp. 4–7.
15. Richard T. Arndt, The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the
Twentieth Century (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005), chap. 4, pp. 75–97.
16. Reich, Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller, p. 168.
17. Dale Adams, “Saludos Amigos: Hollywood and FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy,”
Quarterly Review of Film and Video 24, no. 3 (2007), pp. 289–95; Catherine L.
Benamou, “Dual-Engined Diplomacy: Walt Disney, Orson Welles, and Pan-American
Film Policy During World War II,” in ¡Américas unidas!, ed. Cramer and Prutsch,
chap. 3, pp. 107–41.
18. Adriana Williams, Covarrubias (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), pp. 111–17,
170–71.
19. “Rocky as Collector,” Newsweek, May 26, 1969, p. 88.
20. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., “On Nelson Rockefeller and Modern Art,” in Masterpieces of
Modern Art, by Dorothy Canning Miller et al., The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection
(New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1981), p. 20.
21. MMA 1979.206.1362, 1979.206.438.
22. “Rocky Road to Art,” Newsweek, July 18, 1966, p. 90.
23. Ibid.
24. Interdepartmental memo from Alexander Leiber to James Rorimer, April 30, 1963.
Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, Departmental files, Americas section, “MMA Precolumbian
coll. 1914–65” file.
25. Ibid.
26. Rockefeller, “Introduction,” in Masterpieces of Primitive Art, p. 21.
27. Kevin Bubriski, Michael Rockefeller: New Guinea Photographs, 1961, exh. cat.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum Press, Harvard University, 2006), pp. v, 4.
28. Alphonse Sowada, “The Decline, Suppression and Rejuvenation of Asmat Culture and
Art: A Historical Approach,” in Asmat—Perception of Life in Art: The Collection of the
Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress, ed. Ursula Konrad, Alphonse Sowada, and
Gunter Konrad (Mönchengladbach: B. Kühlen Verlag, 2002), p. 49.
29. Robert Goldwater, “Foreword,” in The Asmat of New Guinea: The Journal of Michael Clark
Rockefeller, ed. Adrian A. Gerbrands (New York: Museum of Primitive Art, 1967), p. 5.
48
30. Archive of the Museum of Primitive Art, Robert Goldwater Library, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York.
31. Goldwater, “Foreword,” in Asmat of New Guinea, p. 5.
32. Laurence Mattet, “Interview with Douglas Newton,” Arts and Cultures 1 (2000), p. 20. 
33. Holland Cotter, “Douglas Newton, 80, Curator Emeritus at the Metropolitan [obitu-
ary],” New York Times, September 22, 2001, p. A13; Virginia-Lee Webb, “‘I Just Like
Looking at Objects’: Douglas Newton, Collector,” in Collecting New Guinea
Art: Douglas Newton, Harry Beran and Thomas Schultze-Westrum, ed. Michael Hamson
(Palos Verdes Estates, Calif.: Michael Hamson Oceanic Art, 2013), pp. 10–12.
34. Robert Goldwater, “Introduction,” in The Museum of Primitive Art: Selected Works
from the Collection, Spring 1957, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Primitive Art,
1957), n.p.
35. Elizabeth Morton, “Frank McEwen and Joram Mariga: Patron and Artist in the
Rhodesian Workshop School Setting, Zimbabwe,” in African Art and Agency in the
Workshop, ed. Sidney Littlefield Kasfir and Till Förster (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2013), pp. 274–97.
36. Frank McEwen, “New Art from Rhodesia,” in AdeleArt.com; http://adeleart.com/
family/frank-mcewen/new-art-from-rhodesia (accessed January 31, 2014).
37. Lectures included Jean Laude’s “Aesthetics and Ethnology,” S. Okeke’s “The Artist in
an Ibo Community,” Bernard Fagg’s “Four Yoruba Masters,” James Porter’s “The
Influence of African Art and Culture in the New World,” Roland Penrose’s “African
Influences on Picasso and Contemporary Art,” and McEwen’s “Art in Contemporary
Africa,” in Proceedings of the First International Congress of African Culture, 1–11 August,
1962 Held at the National Gallery, Salisbury, Rhodesia ([Salisbury, 1962]).
38. Among them were “One Hundred Masterpieces of Ancient African Sculpture,”
“African Influences on the School of Paris,” “African Influences in Brazil,” “African
Influence on North American Negro Art,” and “Contemporary African Art from Most
Parts of Africa.” Exhibitions on the Occasion of the First International Congress of African
Culture, National Gallery, Salisbury, August 1–September 30, 1962, exh. cat. ([Salisbury,
1962]).
39. In Sunday Times (London), August 12, 1962. According to artist Pat Pearce, the con-
gress was “a great cultural experience but for me it was [also] a new experience in
complete integration and national equality, inside the walls of the National Gallery. It
was an oasis.” Gallery (Harare), no. 15 (March 1998), p. 22.
40. Frank McEwen to Robert Goldwater, June 8, 1962. The Visual Resource Archive, Arts
of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(hereafter VRA, MMA), AR.1999.6.62, box 15, folder 2.
41. McEwen to Goldwater, undated letter, probably March 1962. VRA, MMA,
AR.1999.6.62, box 15, folder 2.
42. William Fagg to Goldwater, May 7, 1962. VRA, MMA, AR.1999.6.62, box 15,
folder 2.
43. McEwen to Goldwater, June 8, 1962. VRA, MMA, AR.1999.6.62, box 15, folder 2.
44. Elizabeth Harney, In Senghor’s Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal,
1960–1995 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004).
45. 1er Festival mondial des arts nègres, and Société africaine de culture, Colloque:
Fonction et signification de l’art nègre dans la vie du peuple et pour le peuple, 30 mars–​
8 avril [Rapports] (Paris: Présence africaine, 1967). The festival closed in Dakar on
April 24 but found continuation in Paris, where the exhibition was on view at the
Grand Palais from June to September.
46. Private individuals included Jean de Menil, Eliot Elisofon, and Lester Wunderman;
institutions included the Baltimore Museum of Art; the University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia; and the newly founded
Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.
47. Jean Gabus, director of the Musée d’Ethnographie Neuchâtel, articulated the goals of
the exhibition to Goldwater: “[It] is to allow [us], at least once and for a short period
of time, to gather a part of the treasures of Sub-Saharan Africa. It is a gesture of soli-
darity, of understanding, which certainly will infinitely move Africans.” Jean Gabus to
Goldwater, December 22, 1964. VRA, MMA, AR.1999.6.23, box 6, folder 2. See the
full Gabus-Goldwater correspondence, winter 1964–spring 1965, ibid.
48. Ambassadeur du Sénégal to the U.S. Committee, August 4, 1965. VRA, MMA,
AR.1999.6.23, box 6, folder 2.
49. The United States Committee for the First World Festival of Negro Arts, Inc., Dakar,
Senegal. Presentation brochure, September 1965, introductory statement. VRA,
MMA, AR.1999.6.19, box 5.
50. Ibid., p. A-3. For an example of a planned touring exhibition, see the catalogue Dix
artistes nègres des États-Unis: Premier festival mondial des arts nègres, Dakar, Sénégal,
1966/Ten Negro Artists from the United States: First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar,
Senegal, 1966 (New York: American Federation of Arts, 1966). Produced and spon-
sored by the United States Committee and the National Collection of Fine Arts,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
51. Three works were featured in both exhibitions (figs. 46, 51, 52).
52. Outgoing Loans, Archive of the Museum of Primitive Art, Robert Goldwater
Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. VRA, MMA, AR.1999.6.3, box 1,
folder 3.